Where in the world are you thinking of?

Slow Going

The DOT charges the FAA with a lack of oversight--and responsiveness--at foreign and domestic maintenance facilities

Criticism of the FAA's oversight of aircraft maintenance is not limited to lawmakers and safety advocates: In a January letter to Senator Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), the Department of Transportation's inspector general reported that the FAA had completed only 7 of the 23 recommendations the DOT has made since 2003, when it began assessing the FAA's response to the sharp rise in maintenance outsourcing.

Among the most pressing issues identified by the inspector general are the lack of systematic inspections of maintenance facilities and the absence of any requirement that inspectors follow up to ensure that deficiencies they discover are corrected. Additionally, the lack of any formalized record keeping to track where critical maintenance is performed is of concern. "Until the FAA completes actions for these recommendations," the inspector general writes, "it will be unable to effectively target... resources to repair stations that perform critical aircraft maintenance."

The FAA says that it is working to complete most of the DOT's remaining recommendations before the end of this year, and indeed by August, only 8 of the 23 were still unfinished. Carol Giles, the FAA's director of maintenance oversight, says that the agency will more closely track where work is being done and cull information from a variety of databanks to flag problems with airlines and repair operations.

Still, the FAA doesn't agree with all of the DOT's criticisms. Specifically, the DOT points out that airlines are now having critical maintenance performed at facilities which are not certified by the FAA, a practice that the DOT says "carries risk" because the non-certified facilities are not subject to multiple levels of oversight and other controls. The FAA responds that any facility used by an airline is effectively an extension of that airline's own maintenance operationand that it is up to each carrier to have its own licensed mechanics on-site to oversee repairs. "The carrier has the ultimate responsibility" to assure that its planes meet FAA standards, Giles says.